Research Interests

Translational regulation and control strategies. In all branches of life organisms have evolved highly sophisticated strategies to regulate gene expression. Although transcriptional level control has been extensively studied, translational level events are becoming more important to understand. A primary example is the observation that there is very limited correlation between mRNA abundance and protein concentration. As we try to reprogram cellular behavior with increasingly sensitive systems, this paradox will become an important phenomena to understand in order to produce optimized cellular responses.

Transcriptional Regulatory Networks and Cellular Physiology. Cellular processes must be regulated at multiple levels. In addition, they often require coordination between numerous systems. One strategy that has emerged throughout millions of years of evolution is for cells to regulate physiological events at the level of transcription. Many of these networks are known to be highly interconnected, in that regulatory components from one network can influence many networks. Understanding how these interconnected networks result in reliable, reproducible execution of processes is a long term interest of mine.